


the gauntlet has been thrown

by feralphoenix



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, F/F, Humanstuck, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Slurs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The course of true hate never did run smooth.</p>
<p>In which Aranea starts to come home roughed-up and smug(ger than usual), Meenah is overprotective, Roxy is incredulous, and Roxy's buddies are highly amused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the gauntlet has been thrown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [percypersimmon (venndaai)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



> _(The friend and the foe_ – the 3 o’clock train from queen’s cross station)

The door slammed. This was enough to make Meenah purse her lips and peer over the top of her Sudoku book; she liked to slam doors just fine, but Aranea got her prissy knickers in a twist when other people did.

“The shell’s up with _you?”_ she asked.

“Nothing,” said Aranea.

Touchy, touchy.

Meenah gave her a cursory once-over, eyes roaming from the holes in Aranea’s knee-highs to the neck of her shirt yanked down over one shoulder to her split lip and her blue-black hair standing up in clumps.

“Looks like ‘nothing’ fights like a grade-school shrimp,” Meenah said with a grin.

“You should see the other guy,” Aranea said in a deadpan, and vanished up the stairs.

 

 

That was the first blip that Roxy Lalonde made on Meenah’s radar.

 

 

Aranea liked to go to meetings and conventions. It was just something she _did:_ If she ever stopped talking things to death and fishing for attention via her expertise, she’d probably spontaneously combust. Dropping verbal essays on a dime was to Aranea like trying to think up new and better fish puns was to Meenah. If Aranea ever stopped outlecturing everybody Meenah knew—with the possible exception of Kankri Vantas, who even Aranea expected to announce his engagement to his own voice any day now—it would be a sign that something was very wrong.

Thing was, about one in five of Aranea’s meetings and conventions these days seemed to end with her getting into catfights, and subsequently getting thrown out of the building by staff. The creepy part was that Aranea hardly even seemed put-out by this turn of events. Quite the contrary, she’d come home with her hair sticking out at weird angles and her knuckles lined with cuts and blood and she’d just act smug as shit.

“And here I thought Serket Deuce was the brawler, not you,” Meenah remarked once, having been called in to hold gauze in place while Aranea taped her hands up.

“It’s genetic,” Aranea said, smirking over the rims of her crooked glasses. “All Serkets become physically argumentative once provoked in the right way.”

“So exactly what jumped-up beach,” Meenah demanded, “provoked you in this so-called ‘right’ way?”

Aranea made a noncommittal hum. “An entirely awful girl,” she said, “who is rather stunningly creative with her insults for someone who spells about as well as a habitually inebriated person. I did not even _know_ that those kinds of slurs were still in use until I was having them thrown at me.”

“Was this before or after your shelly fists floundered their way into her face?”

“Oh, before, naturally. I start lively discussions, not arguments,” Aranea said primly. “It is only once they become arguments that I finish them.”

It was the note of fond disgust in Aranea’s voice that had Meenah prickling, if she wanted to be totally honest with herself. She had always thought of that note as _private,_ something that only she could coax out of Aranea. Even random assholes doing fandom wrong on the internet only ever got arch condescension as a response. Meenah had secretly put effort into luring that tone out—it was hilarious, and it made her kinda proud too, knowing that Aranea knew that no matter how Meenah grated on her nerves she’d still want to stick around.

Jealousy was a new feeling for Meenah, who had never had trouble keeping hold of the things she wanted. It only took her five seconds or so to decide that she hated it.

“So does this beach have a name?” she asked at last.

“Roxy Lalonde,” said Aranea, “why?”

“Yo, do I gotta justify my curiosity to you?” Meenah said. “I’m just askin’ for the halibut.”

Aranea looked at her like she suspected Meenah had only wanted to make the pun, and for her part Meenah schooled her expression to not show any relief.

Things had gone more than far enough. This called for drastic action.

 

 

Drastic action involved a little Google-Fu and a train ride to the fancy science campus across town. It also involved sweating over a roller and an hour’s angry pacing in front of the stove, because Meenah hoped the confrontation would be made a little less creepy with cookies as a peace offering.

The campus wasn’t especially remarkable even though Meenah had never been there before. Instead of a central sort of thing all enclosed in two or three ginormous buildings, the college was split all up and down on a single street, with little tendrils extending north and south and snapping up historic buildings downtown and in the residential area, oh-so-sneaky, like the collegiate bigwigs weren’t broadcasting their desire to own the whole town in neon. Meenah sneered to herself. It was cute when amateurs tried to be subtle about their megalomania.

She had to wander up and down the main campus road for just long enough to wish she’d swung by Pyrope’s to pick up a skateboard—‘cause hot damn, she might as well practice what her friend termed her ‘sweet grindz’ as long as she was wasting her time—before peeking through a window of gangly frat boy shoulders to see her target, plus a couple extraneous girls, sitting on the cinderblock border to the campus coffee shop’s garden.

Meenah hefted up the plastic bag with the cookie box in and crossed the brick walkway, scoping out the girls on the way. There were three, a study in contrasts: Skinny, chubby, curvy. Skinny had olive skin, nappy buzz-cut-short hair, and big green eyes that dominated her too-thin face in a way that might’ve been cute once you got past how unnerving she looked. Chubby had an armful of notebooks and jeans that hugged her hips—flaunt what you got, right—along with short black hair that went in a million directions, glasses, and dimples; she was Asian like Aranea.

Curvy, on the other hand, had outrageously pink and lavender clothes, cute kicks, and a scarf long enough to count as a safety hazard. She was darker brown than Meenah, and had done something with her hair—Meenah suspected liberal amounts of relaxants, anime cosplayer dye, and hair spray—so that it swelled up in parody of a 50’s sitcom mother’s ‘do. Her makeup was all bright cotton candy colors to match.

Meenah stopped and postured—close enough for Skinny and Chubby to notice her looming behind Curvy and stare, but not close enough to have anybody reaching for her cell phone to call campus security.

“Yo,” she said, and like she didn’t already know: “which one a’ you small fries is Lalonde?”

Curvy leaned over backwards and quirked her eyebrows like a cartoon character. The eyebrows, Meenah noted, had stayed their natural black.

“That would be me,” she said. “So like, what is your beef?”

Roxy Lalonde dragged “is” out into _izzzz_ and said “your” like _yur,_ the pronunciation of a kid overly enamored with netspeak. On a good day, even the way Meenah talked could get Aranea to narrow her eyes in disgust, so it was already a lot easier to imagine Aranea leering at this kid than she would’ve liked.

Meenah pursed her lips for about ten seconds, sucked on the lower one for about ten more. She’d had a speech planned out, vaguely threatening even, but now that she was actually looking at this impudent college kid so unimpressed that she was giving Meenah an upside-down deadpan stare, it seemed stupid.

“Mostly I wanted to know what yo intentions are for my roommate,” was what she said in the end, and cringed a little because _ugh,_ so square.

“Lol, who now?” Lalonde said, starting to grin.

“Aranea Serket,” Meenah prompted. “Glasses. Talky McAttention-Grabber. Y’all got chucked out of some nerd party thing when you gave her a black eye.”

_“Oh._ The self-righteous bitch whore with the insultingly nice ass.” Lalonde frowned. “And like—it’s not like I just spent all my time whaling on her. She gave me a bloody nose the once.”

Liking twinged in Meenah’s gut at the probably-not-intentional fish pun. She jutted her lower jaw out against it. Fortitude. Loyalty. Raging envy, c’mon.

_“En_ -ee-way,” said Lalonde, scrunching up her nose and her forehead, “what’s it to you?”

Meenah narrowed her eyes and made fish lips for another five seconds, then gave up and decided to go with blunt honesty.

“Yo,” she said, “so Serket’s a self-aggrandizing, opportunistic, needy and attention-starved remora and all? But she is still my best frond. So, little gill, I got a vested interest in whether yo boiling resentment is something I gotta worry about, and what kinda worrying I otter be doin’ here.

“Also, I baked snickerdoodles and you don’t get ‘em unless we sit down and chat like grown fucking ass adults. Cross my heart, I will keep it be-reef.”

Skinny, who like Chubby had been watching the exchange with glinting eyes and her chin in her hands, smiled and showed big crooked eyeteeth, cute as a baby pug. “Pardon the intrusion and all, but I do believe that last pun was reaching just a bit.”

Meenah flushed and glowered. “Yeah, I know. Just ‘cause I _like_ fish puns don’t mean I’m any good at ‘em, yo.”

This made all three girls giggle. Meenah kept scowling.

Chubby chewed on the end of her pen and said with a graceful smile, “Why not find a booth in the campus café? That way Calliope and I can keep an eye on the two of you just in case from outside, and you won’t have to deal with us listening in on your private business.”

Lalonde sighed. “Okay. Okay, Janey, but only for you and because I like snickerdoodles so much. They are tasty as fuckety fuck.”

 

 

“So,” said Lalonde.

“So,” said Meenah, giving her a Cool Grim Nod.

They were sitting across from each other in a café booth. Lalonde had ordered some triple-decker maraschino cherry ice cream/milkshake thing coated in fruit and syrup and sprinkles. Meenah had gotten a latte, which she could never help liking even though she was getting really fucking sick of the things getting compared to her skin tone. How could you help liking them when they were this tasty?

The box of cookies sat on the table in between them. Lalonde reached in to pick up a snickerdoodle.

“So state your beef,” she said, and gestured with it.

Meenah laced her fingers together and raised her eyebrows, staring at Lalonde for a while to communicate the fact that it was not Lalonde who was in control of this conversation. Lalonde raised an eyebrow back and ate her cookie.

“So, what are your intentions for my roommate?”

“What I don’t get,” Lalonde said, flicking the straw stuck in her pink nightmare confection, “is why I gotta have _intentions,_ and why I gotta state ‘em.”

Meenah rolled her eyes.

“Look, shrimp,” she said, laying on the condescension thick, “sometimes when two gills hate each other very, very much, we call that a special kinda hate. This is the kinda hate that lends to doing the horizontal tango. Can you blame me for wanting to know if this is the kinda hate we got on our hands now, or if this is the kinda hate that means I gotta talk Serks into filing a restraining order so y’all don’t murder each other?”

“Oh em fucking gee,” said Lalonde.

“Just answer the fucking question.”

“I don’t—” Lalonde made an angry, abortive gesture with her hands. “Homicide is not something I think is okay? Even if the other person is an obnoxious bitch whore who would throw the whole world under a bus for the sake of her own glory? Can this whole conversation like stop being a thing. I can hate a person without going after their life. That’s kinda how homo sapiens has kept from like, collectively detonating, that most of us have got that capacity.”

“Well, that’s nice to hear,” said Meenah, and she crossed her arms behind her head. “But you still ain’t told me what yo intentions actually are.”

“I don’t _know,”_ Lalonde said. “I don’t even know if it pisses me off how we run in the same crowds enough that we can’t stop running into each other or if it’s—”

“Fun,” Meenah supplied.

Lalonde looked up at her, pale eyes wary.

“Yeah,” she said. “A challenge. A distraction.”

“Except somefin to look forward to,” Meenah said, and extracted a snickerdoodle from the box to dip it carefully in her coffee. “Exciting even.”

“Yeah,” Lalonde said again. And: “Shit.”

Meenah leaned forward, planted her elbows on the table.

“What I am thinkin’ is that we can maybe work with this,” she said.

 

 

 

CC: yo   
AG: Hello, Meenah.   
AG: Am I a8out to learn your excuse as to why our sink is piled with unwashed dishes and other cooking implements? ::::)   
CC: wut   
CC: no   
CC: this is MUC)( more important   
AG: My 8reast is just aflutter with anticipation as to what could be more important. >::::/   
CC: i happen to have got you a   
CC: hang on while i brace myself for typin somefin this inane   
CC: h8 d8   
AG: ::::O!   
CC: dont celebrate just yet   
CC: im your chaperone   
AG: What.


End file.
